cranky pixels

Had a lovely time at the Crafty Mamas Bazaar at Milagros this weekend. Maybe I only sold one toy. I admit nothing. Possibly I gave away more than I sold. But that’s the best part about making stuff! I totally don’t buy into the whole time=money thing. Time=love. Love=money? (Yay, prostitution!) (Ha. I kid. I have watched enough Julia Roberts in my life to know that prostitutes do not kiss on the mouth.)

Speaking of…what were we speaking of? Oh yes, money, and time, and love, which brings us (naturally) to Ikea. We took a family trip to Ikea today, totally spur of the moment, and realized when we emerged, slightly shaken and confused, that we had been there for four hours. Now, I am all about the Ikea love, but four hours? Seriously? Still, we managed to get a truly unlikely number of housewares for a mere $40, and that’s a win by any standard. And meatballs. There are few things on this earth better than Ikea meatballs. My mouth is watering just thinking about them.

Frog’s legs are, actually, very good. They do taste quite a bit like chicken, which is reassuring when confronted with a food that used to be covered in a slick reptile skin. I was afraid that they would come like that, covered in frog skin, and I was certain I would not be able to consume anything covered in frog skin. They were deep-fried, though, battered, and only resembled the extended, leaping legs of a frog in shape.

My week was a lot like that: unexpected goodness in unexpected places. I was surprised on Thursday by an e-mail from the Portland Picks folks, saying they love my Cranky Pals and are featuring them in (last) Friday’s newsletter. Squee! The Crankies, they are all about the love. (I accidentally typed “lobe” there, the Crankies, all about the lobe, and then spent a period of time contemplating what sort of lobe the Crankies might be all about and where in the brain it was located. Although perhaps the ear. It is hard to say.)

The kid = still weaned, which is good since my supply is finally (finally!) dwindling. Apparently I am a milking machine. Several third-world countries could be sustained on my milk supply. Unsurprisingly, now that the milk is finally going the way of the dodo, I find myself suddenly deflated. This means none of my bras are even remotely functional. You’d think I’d just start wearing one of my less immense bras, considering that I had a stash of them from my less endowed days. You’d think that, but that would presuppose that I knew where any of them were, and could locate them as needed. I suspect that they are in a box somewhere, like pretty much everything else we own. Being prepared is not one of my strong suits.

Not nursing is pretty great, though. I heartily recommend it.

technorati tags:cranky pals, portland picks, frog legs, milking machine, weaning

(Or, How I Got To Blog While My Kid Watched A DVD)

Today I need to disconnect and return the DVR (only, what, three weeks after we got rid of the cable? Go me), clean the house (since I appear to have volunteered to possibly host a get-together this weekend, maybe), do some homework, crochet, pick up my holds at the library, sign for the package containing the new potty seat (whee!), send back the Netflix, buy some yarn, put away my crafting supplies, e-mail a client, update our business website, drop off a check at the bank, and make some lunch. Note that several of these things involve me being in two places at once. Good thing I discovered time travel!

Naturally I am going to take this time to recap my awesome Crafty Mamas Bazaar experience and wax lyrical about my upcoming Cranky Pals newsletter, whichisreallycoolandyoushouldsignup.

So in case the “awesome” wasn’t hint enough, the Crafty Mamas Bazaar? Awesome. I had a great time, sold some toys, chatted with some moms…bought an Ergo…all in all, a very fruitful experience and one I will most likely repeat next month (sans Ergo purchase, of course).

The folks at Milagros are wonderful, and it’s so great of them to host this thing and make everyone feel so welcome. Plus they have one of the coolest local baby shops this side of LilyToad. Speaking of, that’s another thing I should add to my list: drop off unsold toys at LilyToad.

All the new designs are up at the Cranky Pals website, by the way, including Happy Fun Baby’s new favorite, Lulu Heartbreak. She has a detachable heart! Detachable! This causes me joy.

Another thing that causes me joy? The brand spankin‘ new Cranky Pals newsletter! I spent the better part of Sunday designing it (what? I was on a roll) and I’m so pleased with it I could just burst. And it’s messy, the bursting, so why not sign up and see for yourself? Every name on the subscription list makes me feel that much more validated, and isn’t that what the internet is all about?

technorati tags:cranky pals, crafty mamas bazaar, milagros, lilytoad, lulu heartbreak, ergo

So it’s official: I’ll be doing the Crafty Mamas Bazaar this Saturday at Milagros Boutique! I’ve been crazy busy getting everything ready, but it looks like I’m going to have enough toys to fill the whole table. Yay!

I was going to post pictures of some of the new Crankies, but I’m tired and I don’t have the energy to clear off the table and whatnot. Whatnot would also entail properly working the camera, and my eyes are all tweaked out from staring at tinytiny stitches for the past several hours. So you will just have to trust that the new toys kick all sorts of ass, and that I will post pictures later, when it is not a quarter after 1 in the morning. Yes.

And if you’re in the area, stop by Milagros on Saturday and say hi.

technorati tags:milagros, crafty mamas bazaar, portland, crafts, cranky pals

Holy Nap Strike, Batman. The kid, he is so obviously tired, yet does he sleep? He does not. Currently he is ensconced in a blanket nest on the couch, blearily watching Little Einsteins on DVD. (While we were at Target this weekend we wisely decided that some kid DVDs were in order, so the Little Einsteins were procured, as well as All-Star ABCs, which features Stephen Colbert as the letter Z. And is really freaking funny. Which strikes me as somehow very wrong.)

The kid has a stuffy nose, which might explain the reluctance to nap. It seems like every time we go anywhere he catches some sort of bug, because, hello, kids? Wee little disease factories. Just today my child came up to me and enthusiastically wiped his nose all over the shoulder of my shirt. And I didn’t even blink. Just “Aaaw, is your nose runny?” I can think of few times in my life that I wouldn’t object to being someone’s Kleenex, but like they say, it’s different when you have kids. Different, and more gross.

I think I’m doing the Crafty Mamas Bazaar at Milagros this Saturday, so I’m spending this week frantically creating toys. My newest idea involves a shirt with a button on the front, onto which one (or one’s child) can attach a number of interchangable felt creatures. As an aside: who knew that buttons were so controversial? Half the moms I told about this project reacted with chagrin that I would even consider using a button in conjunction with children’s clothes. Choking! Hazard! Am I insane? I am not insane. I am even working on a version which uses a felt button (thanks so much for the idea, K!) for younger kids. But I still think that regular buttons are really not that bad.

I think the kid has finally succombed to the lure of sleep, so I’m going to wander off in the direction of my craft table. Which, uh, is actually the kitchen table, covered in so much other stuff we couldn’t possibly use it for food. Yay, multitasking!

technorati tags:crafts, nap, baby, dvd

What’s in store for today? I’m heading over to the office to do some paintings for my sister. I promised them to her, what, eight months ago? The latest iteration had me giving them to her for Christmas, which is still possible if she had been, say, comatose for the past month. But still, better late than never, right?

Speaking of late, I’d planned on being at the office by now, but decided, inexplicably, to run my disk backups before I leave. This means that I have at least 20 more minutes of watching the little status bar on my backup program increase incrementally while my kid runs around being incredibly cute and making me not want to leave at all. He is seriously cute, though. You wouldn’t want to leave either.

It’s surprisingly hard to switch gears and go from Mama to Artist Person. Web design I can manage, but web design is less…I don’t know, visceral than painting. It requires less of me. Before Happy Fun Baby was born, I loved to be able to shut myself in a room and paint or write or draw. Now it feels like doing that is denying my kid somehow. Because god  forbid he have a mother who does something just because she loves doing it. ::face:: Besides, the web design – and even the toymaking – I can justify by pointing out that it will, theoretically, generate some sort of monetary compensation. The art is just for me. Well – in this case, it’s for Auntie Pep and Uncle Speedracer, but still.

On the Cranky Pals front, guess whose toys are being carried at LilyToad? If you said “Cranky Mama,” give yourself a shiny nickel! No, really – you deserve it. Seriously, I’m ridiculously excited about having my toys in an actual store, not to mention being able to feel like I’m contributing to LilyToad’s success, since I love that place unreasonably and would hate to see it go out of business. Dude, who went and got all serious here? I’m still doing the happy dance because someone likes my toys.

My backup is, like, 65% done. Woo hoo! I’m going to go have a sandwich.

technorati tags:painting, art, cranky pals, LilyToad, creativity

The other day Not So and the baby and I went over to our favorite kid shop (they sell kids there! Thank you, I will be here all week) to pick up some black-and-white stripey BabyLegs so I can continue with my master plan of turning my toddler into a wee little goth. I was still sick, of course, because I am stubborn at just the wrong angle and refuse to actually go to the doctor. So my ears were still quite plugged for our little outing. Plugged ears make the world seem somewhat surreal and disconnected, like watching the TV on mute. A lot like that, in fact. As an added bonus I had become completely unable to gauge the volume of my voice, so in addition to constantly saying “What?” I was also, probably, shouting like a crazy person. Fun!

So of course I decided to get into a conversation with the owner of LilyToad about my recent flirtation with toymaking, which led to her expressing a genuine interest in carrying Cranky Pals at the store, which is highly improbable but nonetheless true. So, yay! Also: eek!

My “inventory” (if by inventory you mean a stack of felt remnants and a bunch of batting) is woefully sparse, and I still haven’t figured out the damned sewing machine, so naturally my first instinct was to go out to Bolt on Alberta and touch all the fabric. We picked up some yummy fuzzy something-or-other (one of these days I’m going to keep track of which fabric is which) and then, bolstered by our brave foray into the outside world, decided to walk a mile and a half in the fresh air, which surely held health-giving powers. Yes?

No. I spent the next day sick, exhausted, and weeping, completely unable to do anything in the least bit useful and annoying Happy Fun Baby by my refusal to be fun and/or engaging. Did I go to the doctor, you ask? I did not. But, to be fair, I felt much better the next day.

I have been sewing like a mad fiend since then in an effort to make up for the days I lost to my stupid cold. I’ve been referring to it like that pretty consistently – my stupid cold – and I intend to continue until every trace of phlegm is out of my system. Which might be never. I’ll just be that girl with the perpetual case of the sniffles.

Related: I’m thirty-two, for Christ’s sake. Enough with this “girl” thing already. ::shakes head at self::

So I’ll be bringing a bunch of Cranky Pals over to LilyToad tomorrow; keep your fingers crossed for me.

technorati tags:cranky pals, lilytoad, crafts